


Don't Blink, Don't Close Your Eyes

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [34]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, Established Relationship, F/F, Growing Up, Moving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 03:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20108317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: Anya gets an email from Indra that turns her world, as well as that of her family, on its head.  An argument ensues, but that's just how things go with her and Raven... and making up afterward is always worth it.Takes place at the same time asSurprise! We're Going To....





	Don't Blink, Don't Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone who wanted to know how Anya and Raven are doing.

Anya read the email, then read it again because she was sure she had missed something, read something wrong... but no. No matter how many times she scanned the words, they still said the same thing.

"Well shit," she said, tossing her phone aside. 

"What?" Raven asked, coming out of the kitchen with a plate loaded with sandwiches and a bowl of chips. It was her turn to cook, which usually meant takeout, but they had cold cuts that were going to go bad if they didn't get eaten, so sandwiches it was. Anya often wondered why Raven insisted on having a night where dinner was her responsibility when she had absolutely no interest in actually cooking. At least Tris _tried_, even if she relied heavily on the microwave and things that came frozen in bags. 

Anya grabbed one of the triangles (Tris insisted they tasted better when cut on the diagonal, and it was habit now even when she wasn't home) and bit into it savagely, tearing off one of the corners. To her credit, Raven made a mean sandwich. Just the right proportion of meat to cheese to bread, with lettuce for crunch (and tomato if you wanted it, but Anya thought it made the bread soggy) and the perfect amount of mustard for kick. 

"Fuck," Raven grunted, collapsing down on the other end of the couch and rubbing her thigh. "I am so goddamn sick of this thing..." She hefted her leg up onto the cushions and worked open the fasteners. Anya got the ones on her lower leg, and Raven smiled her thanks as she discarded the brace. She massaged her knee for a few seconds before turning her attention to the food, crunching into a chip. "What's shit?" she asked with her mouth full. 

Anya shook her head, pointing to her mouth and then holding up a finger, because she hadn't been raised in a barn. When she finally swallowed, she said, "It's almost time for Jeopardy."

Raven gave her a long look, her lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed, but she grabbed the remote and turned the TV on. "We're talking after," she said as it switched over from commercials. 

Anya nodded, and tried to focus on the answers, but all she could think about was the three words from Indra's email that changed everything: "I'm coming home."

After final Jeopardy, Raven turned to look at her. "Whatever it is, it must be bad," she said. "It's like you weren't even trying." 

Anya flashed a wry smile and scooted over to center of the couch, pulling Raven's leg into her lap, starting at her foot and working her way up, loosening the knots and trying to ease Raven's pain as best she could before adding to it... although maybe it wouldn't be as big a deal to Raven as it was to her. 

Or maybe it would.

"Indra's coming home," she said finally, digging her thumbs in just above Raven's knee. 

Raven looked at her, brown eyes wide. "I take it you don't just mean for a visit."

Anya shook her head. "For good. There were issues with her contract, and with her visa, and she decided that it's finally time to come home and build – or rebuild – a life here. Reconnect with her daughter, all that." 

"Which means she's going to want her place back." 

"Yup." 

Six years. More than six years, actually; she'd moved in straight after spending the summer with Lexa, nursing her through her heartbreak in the wake of the loss of Costia. A semester on her own, and then a year and a half with Lexa, and almost as soon as Lexa moved out, Raven had moved in. Less than a year after that, Tris had become a nearly full-time resident, and she'd been with them for going on four years now. Not to mention the Thanksgivings, the Christmases, the various other gatherings... All in this house.

This place was crammed with memories. It had been a blank slate when she moved in, almost. Now the walls were filled with pictures and art, the kitchen cabinets stuffed with a wide variety of mismatched dishes, the pantry overflowing with a rotating supply of ingredients for Anya's baking endeavors when she got stressed out. 

There was the kitchen table they rarely ate at, but that had been the site of many a homework brawl as they struggled to get Tris through high school. She was anything but dumb, but she'd hated school to the point where she'd refused to attend graduation, but at least she'd gotten that far. It was also the site of any number of triumphs of engineering, and an equal (or greater) number of failures. It was there that Tris had learned one of the most important lessons they could teach her: Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better. Until she succeeded, and there was nothing better than the grin on her face then. 

Anya wasn't ready to let it go.

She also didn't have a choice.

"Did she say when?" Raven asked. 

"Beginning of April," Anya said. 

"So we have time." 

Anya nodded. It was only January, so they had time to find somewhere else to live. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that after a lifetime of being moved from place to place to place, with her parents appearing on a rotating basis depending on who was deployed and whether it was somewhere she could go, too, she had finally found – no, _built_ \-- a home. Now she was losing it. Again. 

"Easy there, killer," Raven said, wrapping her fingers around Anya's where she'd gotten a little overzealous digging her thumbs into a particularly stubborn knot. "I know it sucks, but—"

"No, you don't," Anya said. "How many places did you live growing up? How many times did you switch schools? How many friends promised they would keep and touch, then disappeared after a few emails?" 

It wasn't Raven's fault, and she knew she shouldn't take it out on her, but she didn't know how to make her understand that this was about more than just a house. Indra wasn't here to be mad at, and it wasn't like she could get mad at her anyway, because this had always been a temporary arrangement. Anya had expected that once she finished grad school, she would find a job somewhere else, get her own place, and Indra would either come back or find someone else to move in. She hadn't expected to find a group of friends that she wasn't willing to part with. She hadn't expected to find _family_.

"Hey," Raven said, sliding her leg off Anya's knees. She moved closer, and for a second Anya thought she might relocate to Anya's lap, only to realize at the last moment that it wasn't bait that Anya would go for. Instead she reached out, putting the tip of one finger against Anya's jaw and turning her head so they were eye to eye. "Let's talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about," Anya said. "It is what it is. Do we even still have boxes, or did Lexa use them all when she moved out?" She tried to stand up, but Raven got a hand on her shoulder, leaning in to push her back into the cushions.

"You said we'd talk," Raven said. 

"_You_ said we'd talk," Anya corrected, taking Raven's wrist in as gentle a grip as she could manage while still making it clear that she wasn't going to let herself be pinned down. "And I told you what's going on. There's nothing more to say. If you want to be helpful—" she peeled Raven's hand away and stood up, "just stay out of my way."

"Are you fucking serious?" Raven asked, standing up but having to lean heavily on the couch without her brace. "You're not the only one losing your home, you know! Just because—"

Of course Tris chose that moment to walk in, wide eyes darting from Anya to Raven and back again. "We're losing our house?" she asked.

On the surface, she sounded calm enough, but Anya knew her well enough to hear the edge in her voice, the anxiety that could ramp up to full-blown panic if her tendency to catastrophize was let off its leash. Which meant she had a minute, maybe two, to put a positive spin on this, and to hell with her own feelings. 

"Indra – you remember her from the dojang?" Tris nodded. "She's finally moving back to the states, which means she's going to need her house back. Which means we need to start looking for a new place."

Tris blinked. "I thought this was your house," she said, looking at Anya. 

"Nope," Anya said. "I've basically been housesitting, except I pay for it instead of getting paid, since I graduated college." She forced a smile. "On the plus side, maybe we'll find someplace with a little more room. Aren't you always complaining about how we're always on top of each other?"

Tris bit her lip, and Anya wanted to cross the living room to pull it from between her teeth before she managed to scrape it raw. It had been a while since she'd gotten herself worked up enough to do that, but anything that unsettled the order of her life was a source of anxiety for Tris, so it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility. 

"No," she said. "I used to complain about you breathing down my neck about stupid school, but..."

"Close enough," Anya said. "Wouldn't you like more space anyway? A bigger room?"

"My room's big enough," Tris said. 

"Maybe somewhere with a room that you two can set up as a workshop," Anya said. "So we don't end up with nuts of the nut-and-bolt variety in the cookies, instead of the walnut-and-macadamia kind." 

"That happened _one time_," Raven said. "And whose fault was it really? I got you enough cooling racks for like four dozen cookies, and then you went and baked six." 

"And whose fault was _that_?" Anya tossed back. "If you hadn't decided to make a few 'tweaks' to the toaster that resulted in the smoke alarm going off at three in the morning – who makes toast at three in the morning anyway?" 

"I was _testing_ it!" Raven said. 

"Who decides the toaster needs improving at three—"

"I had a lot going on at work! I was trying to get my mind off it!"

"Who decides a toaster needs improving in the first—"

"It doesn't toast evenly!" 

"Now it doesn't toast at all," Anya said. "R.I.P. Toastmaster 3000."

"3001. Beta version," Raven said. She hobbled toward Anya, who met her halfway and put her arms around her so she didn't have to try to put weight on her left leg. 

"Rest In Pieces," Tris said, making some strange gesture that maybe was trying to cross herself, but failing miserable. 

"I'm sorry," Anya whispered, her lips brushing Raven's temple. "I know I'm being irrational. I just..." She sighed. "I love this place, you know?"

"I know," Raven said. Her eyes flicked toward Tris. "Talk more later?"

Anya nodded and helped Raven back to the couch. "So who's ready to start house hunting?"

* * *

Even after all these years, Raven's first instinct when faced with a problem that couldn't be solved with tools was to throw sex at it. She could thank her mother for teaching her that... and Finn for reinforcing it because it always worked on him. Sometimes it even worked on Anya, but she should have known this wouldn't be one of those times. 

So they argued instead. They tossed barbed words and watched them sink in and cut and immediately regretted them. They bandaged each other's wounds, kissed them to make them better, and let it go. They didn't promise not to do it again because they both knew they would, because they both knew they _could_. They got mad, they blew up, they made up. No grudges were held. Maybe it was dysfunctional, who the hell knew? But it worked for them. 

Even Tris had learned over the years that the two of them shouting didn't mean they were actually angry at each other. They were just working through something that they didn't want – or didn't know how – to articulate, and the real conversation would happen later, once they'd purged the initial onslaught of emotion. Once it devolved to bringing up one of Raven's ridiculous failed experiments, it was pretty much over. 

"I thought you were staying the night at the farm," Raven said, settling back on the couch with her leg stretched out in front of her and her shoulder dug into Anya's until she draped her arm around Raven to ease the pressure. Tris had volunteered to look after the farm while Echo, Luna, Clarke and Lexa took the kids on a surprise trip to Disney, and rather than driving back and forth multiple times a day, she would be staying in the guest room. Yesterday she'd freaked out, saying she'd made a mistake, she couldn't do it, something terrible was going to happen and it was going to be all her fault, and it had taken them an entire batch of cookies, from raw ingredients to half-eaten, to get her calmed down, reassuring her that Echo had been teaching her everything she needed to know, that Ontari would be there in case there was a problem with the house, and they were only a phone call away. 

Tris shook her head. "I was going to, but..." She shrugged. "I just wanted to be home for one more night." Her lips pressed together, screwed to the side. "I guess I better stop calling it that." 

Anya shoved Raven over, making room on her other side for Tris, and patted the cushion. "You can call this place home until we find a new place to call home," she said. "It'll be all right." She put her other arm around the girl, pulling her in and ruffling her hair. 

"What if you can't find a place?" Tris asked. Raven didn't miss the fact that she said 'you' instead of 'we', and maybe she was reading too much into it, but after being rejected by one family, she knew Tris was hypersensitive to the possibility of losing another. It was a constant back and forth, with her clinging with all her might one day – sometimes literally – and pushing them away so it would hurt less when she lost them another. 

"We will," Raven said. "Have you met us? When we want something, we get it." 

"Yeah but—"

"Nope," Raven said. "No 'yeah but'. We're gonna find a place even more awesome than this one. With a big kitchen for Anya, a workshop for us... what else?" Tris shrugged, and Raven reached across Anya to poke her. "Come on. Pretend you're one of those people on the house hunting shows with an obnoxiously long list of things they absolutely must have in a house. I want a five-car garage with a car lift, a shed where I can set up my microbrewery, a widow's walk where you can tearfully wave to me every time I leave the house..." 

Anya snorted, and Tris laughed. "What about a sewing room?" Tris asked. 

"Ugh, so practical," Raven said. "Think bigger!" 

"A finished basement with a workout space?" Tris suggested. "We could get our own heavy bag..."

"That's actually a great idea," Anya said. "Then we'll have something to punch even when we can't make it to the dojang."

"And we can tape the faces of people who pissed us off on it," Raven added. "Bet Master Gustus doesn't let you do that!" 

Tris snickered. "Nope." 

"What else?" Raven prodded. "No indoor pool? Bowling alley? Ooh, built in soft-serve ice cream machine?" 

Tris shook her head. "You're ridiculous," she said, but she was grinning. "There's no way we would find a place with all that."

"Not at our price point," Anya intoned, taking on the role of the beleaguered realtor that had to try to find a champagne home on a beer budget. "But Raven's silliness aside, I think we can definitely find a place that ticks most of the boxes on the wish list. Especially if we move out of the city." 

Raven gasped. "Perish the thought!" she said. 

Anya nudged her. "You don't even work in the city!" she said. "You commute out every day." 

"And the traffic is awesome because everyone else is coming _in_," Raven said, flashing her a wink and a grin. 

"We could move closer to the farm, maybe," Tris said. "That's in the same direction as your work, isn't it?" 

"Roughly," Raven said. "The commute would probably be about the same, depending on how close to the farm we were."

"And we don't need to worry about the school district," Anya mused, "so that potentially opens things up a bit more..."

"Enough talk," Raven said. "Grab me my tablet, kiddo. Let's do this thing."

* * *

"Mmm," Raven hummed, her lips pressed to Anya's head. "I should make you feel the need to apologize more often..." She combed her fingers through Anya's hair with one hand, the other tracing idly up and down her back, enjoying the trail of goosebumps her touch left in its wake. 

Anya's breath gusted against her skin in a quick, soft laugh. "Is that what you think that was?" she asked. 

"That's what I _know_ it was," Raven said. 

"How do you know?" Anya asked, tipping her head up so she could see Raven's face, if only in extreme close-up. 

"Because it happens every time," Raven said. "We argue, we make up, and then we make out." She grinned. 

Anya considered for a second, then rolled her eyes, trying to frown and failing. "No lie detected," she admitted. "As long as you're happy."

"As long as _we're_ happy," Raven corrected. 

Anya gave a short nod, her chin digging into Raven's collarbone before she peeled herself away, and Raven tugged on her pillow so there was space for Anya to share it, and Anya settled back against her, but with just enough space between them that they could see each other... as well as they could see anything when the only light was what little crept in around the edges of the blinds. "What do you think it says about us that most of our serious conversations happen post-sex, in the dark?"

Raven suspected the question was meant to be rhetorical, but she answered anyway. "I think it says, 'Fuck it. There might be monsters in the corner and we'd never see them coming and we'd have to face them naked, so in for a penny, in for a pound.'" 

Anya laughed again, and her lips brushed against Raven's in a way that made her shiver, and not in a tingly sexytimes way. In a 'this is the woman I love and I would do anything for her and know she would do the same for me and no matter what happens we're in it together' way. Raven had never felt anything like it before – she'd thought she did with Finn, but it had all turned out to be a lie – and she didn't think she would ever feel it again with anyone else.

But that didn't matter, because neither of them was going anywhere any time soon. 

Not emotionally, anyway. 

"Do you want your own room again?" Anya asked. "In the new place?"

Raven jerked, feeling like an ice cube had just been dropped down her spine. "Why the hell would I want my own room?" she asked. "Do _you_ want me to have my own room?"

Anya closed her eyes, shook her head. "That isn't what I meant." Her fingers dug into Raven's back. "When you moved in –"

Raven wanted to shove her away, but at the same time she wanted to pull her close, to crush their bodies together and reclaim the feeling of not being entirely separate people that she'd had only minutes ago. She did neither. She just froze. "When I moved in, this was still new! When I moved in, we were still figuring things out!" She shook her head. 

"I just thought you might want your own space," Anya said. "You can't pretend that you don't sometimes want to get away from me." 

"And sometimes you want to get away from me!" Raven snapped. "But I always come back! So do you!" She swiped furiously at the tears that rose in her eyes. "Isn't that what fucking couches are for?!" She shook her head again. "I'll _have_ my own space. I'll have a workshop. You'll have a gym. I don't need—" She choked. 

"Raven," Anya said, pulling her in and hugging her so tight she felt her ribs creak in protest. "I wasn't trying to upset you."

"Yeah, well, you fucking did," Raven said. "And I can't breathe." 

Anya let go of her instantly, and might have retreated to the edge of the bed if Raven hadn't kept hold of her. "Is _that_ why you freaked out?" Raven asked after a moment. "Did you think if we moved, that things would change?"

"You only started sleeping in here every night because Tris took over your bed," Anya said. "It's not crazy—"

"Yeah, it kinda is," Raven said. "That was _four years_ ago. And I was sleeping in here like five nights out of seven, if not more. Nothing's going to change, okay? You're stuck with me." 

Anya sniffed, and when Raven touched her cheek she found it was damp. Raven brushed away the tears with her thumbs, and then with her lips. "Tell me what's really going on," she whispered. 

She could hear Anya swallow, several times before she finally spoke. "Sometimes I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop," she said. "Everything will be fine, and then something will happen, some other part of my life will get shaken up, and I think, 'Now? Will this be when she finally gets tired of me? When she realizes she wants – needs – more?'" 

"More...? More _what_?" Raven stared at her, honestly bewildered. 

Anya's eyes widened and she tilted her head. 

"No, seriously," Raven said. "More what? What the hell do you think I need that you don't give me?" Anya's fingers twitched against her skin, trailing over her hip, and the puzzle piece slid into place. "_Sex_? Is _that_ what this is about?" 

Anya's lack of an answer was answer enough.

"For fuck's sake, An – no pun intended – you can't seriously—" But she did. Obviously. She'd just said it. "That's not an issue," Raven said. "For me. I guess it still is for you. But it hasn't been for me in a long time... if it ever really was, once we'd been together long enough for me to have an understanding of what you being asexual meant in practice, not just in theory. I'm all good, Anya."

* * *

Anya wanted to believe her. More than anything, she wanted to believe her. But. 

"I've heard that before," Anya said softly. "Turned out—"

"I'm a lot of things," Raven said, cutting her off, "but a liar isn't one of them. So don't put their shit on me. Don't put it on yourself, either. You didn't let them down, or whatever it is you think, by being yourself. It just wasn't the right relationship for you. Either of you. Any of you. Whatever. But this is. Okay? We've proven that over and over again for, shit, more than half a fucking decade. So whatever this move stirs up, don't let that be part of it. Please."

Half a fucking decade. Had it really been that long? It didn't feel like it... but at the same time it felt like they'd always been together. Certainly it was the longest relationship Anya had ever been in, and she rarely questioned whether it would last. But like she'd told Raven, change stirred shit up, scraped at old wounds.

"Do you hate my leg?" Raven asked. 

It took a second for Anya to even realize what she was talking about. "What? No!"

"Why not?" Raven asked. 

"Because it's part of you," Anya said, and realized where Raven was going with this. "It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?" Raven asked, and Anya couldn't see her expression but she imagined her arching her eyebrows. "You love hiking, right?"

"Yes," Anya said. "But—"

"Uh-uh," Raven said, pressing a finger to Anya's lips. "Just answer the question."

"Yes, I love hiking," Anya sighed. 

"And because it's something you love, it's something you want to share with people, right? With me?"

"Yes," Anya said. 

"But because of my leg, hiking isn't really at the top of my list of fun things to do," Raven said. "Doesn't mean I can't hike, or I won't hike, but it's never going to be my go-to activity when I've got some time on my hands. But I know it's something you enjoy, and I like spending time with you, so we go for hikes. And some days I'm feeling great and I'm right there at your side the whole way. Sometimes we take an easier trail than you might have chosen so we know I won't be struggling and end up miserable. Sometimes I stop off at a scenic vista while you continue to the summit, and you pick me up on the way down, and we finish the hike together. We're both happy, because we both got what we wanted out of it: you got the satisfaction of reaching the top, and I got to enjoy the view. There's nothing wrong with that. No one got hurt; in fact, we avoided potential injury by doing what we were comfortable with in that moment, on that day." 

Anya sniffed, caught between laughter and tears, and took Raven's face between her hands. "I love you so fucking much."

"Obviously," Raven said. "I'm awesome. But do you get it? Because I can keep going. I don't think I've reached the peak of this metaphor yet and—"

"I got it!" Anya said, kissing her in case she had any ideas about continuing anyway, and she felt Raven's lips curve against her in a grin. 

"I love you," Raven said. "All of you. Exactly as you are. Okay?"

Anya sniffed, nodded, kissed her again, and it tasted of salt but there was sweetness mixed with the bitter. She didn't linger for long.

"Shit," Raven breathed, as Anya's tongue grazed her belly button. "When I said I needed to make you want to apologize more often, I didn't mean _right now_."

Anya looked up. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No, no," Raven said. "Carry on."

Anya smirked. "Next stop, Kilimanjaro," she said.

Raven laughed, and then she gasped, and then...

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK, BITCHES! 
> 
> I had a very productive hiatus, and now we are back to our regularly scheduled programming.


End file.
